Hi! My name is André Buck and I am the Technical Support Manager at ClickPoint Software. I handle all of the technical operations for the LeadExec software. I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and also talk a bit about the importance of data organization. I have nearly 7 years experience in technical customer support. A universal trait in every industry that I’ve ever worked with is organization. The better your system is organized, the more efficiently it can perform. This rings true in every industry and it’s no different for Lead Management.
Whether it’s building out customer profiles or designing a new lead type to bring on new business, organization equates to preparedness. As a provider of technical support, personally it is much easier to provide support to those that have already organized their requests and changes and are prepared to communicate to me exactly what they want. It makes the communication between the two of us that much more fluent. Below are several suggestions for organizing several aspects of your Lead Distribution system that may help you as you move on in the Lead Distribution industry.
1.) Organize Early – Before you begin brining leads into your system, it’s imperative that you think about the industry that you will be providing leads for. You need to analyze this carefully because the more you can predict where that industry will go, the better you can equip your lead capturing methods to make your leads maintain their value. By analyzing what the industry may need down the line, you are able to add that into your lead type as a field sooner and provide that data to your customers. I have seen both sides of this and the company that researches and prepares before creating their lead type have to make fewer changes to their system further down the line. Whereas those that simply dive in to it without researching the industry that they will be providing leads for are back several times needing changes to their system in order to capture all of the required data they need to have successful leads. Below is an example of a well organized lead type in Excel format.
2.) Monitor the reports from your system often. Print or save them and review them monthly. You can often identify trends in your own system that can prepare you for lows or highs in your business. The better you prepared, the easier these times will be. From my experience, I see that those that use the reports effectively often are less stressed and affected by changes to their industry. With LeadExec this is made easy for you as a large number of reports are available from the Dashboard.
3.) Prioritize and organize changes before implementing them into your live system. The smallest changes to your Lead Distribution system can affect every other aspect of the system. It’s imperative that before making any changes that you map out all of the other parts of the system that will be affected by this change. This can be one of the most important lessons that you will learn. I have seen changes rushed without consideration for the different parts of the system that will be affected and it’s been catastrophic. Often times this can even lead to down time, and in the Lead Distribution industry, that is never good. By simply mapping out what will be affected by the changes you’re requesting, you can head off any damage that could be caused and ultimately make the transition smooth sailing.
I really like this update and so do our customers. This update allows our customers to not only view the time the lead is inserted into their system but also elapsed time since it has been touched. You can see how long a lead is sitting and you can see the time zone that the lead resides in with +1, +2, or +3 to tell you how many hours there is between your time zone and the leads time zone. This was a survey recommendation we received from our clients. We send out surveys once a month asking our customers what updates they would like to see. We take recommendations and pick the top 5. We then let our customers vote on what features would be most useful to them. Listening to our customers has helped ClickPoint understand the customer and what they need to work more efficiently. I hope after a couple of years the updates will make our lead management system the best. We believe at ClickPoint in following the collective voice of the customer and we think it will pay off.
Have you ever heard that leadership in a company is a lot like a farmer and his garden? The farmer picks the lot, tills the soil, plants the seeds, and then watches as his garden grows. In a small technology company it is imperative that leadership comes from the top but even more essential is that there is an environment for other leaders to emerge. If there is one thing I have learned over the years it’s to not be intimidated by people that bring something different to the table. The best leaders are not intimidated by other great leaders. They give them the proper environment and conditions and let the leaders take the company to new heights. This may be difficult for some leaders but it is absolutely essential to any technology start up. You need other team players to help get your company off the ground and you need a good amount of resilience. I recently planted a garden at home with my wife and thought about this analogy. Watching our vegetables growing before our eyes, it seems so simple to compare it to the leadership analogy. If you don’t provide the conditions for success, the vegetables or leaders wilt and never bring anything to the table.
At ClickPoint we foster the idea that everyone is bringing something to the plate. Everyone is a leader. There isn’t one person that is not leading at any one time. Our tier 2 tech support is leading tier 1 tech support. Tier 1 tech support is leading by example and through their actions to every one of our customers. At ClickPoint Software we know that every customer we interact with is in some way is looking to us to see when we are going mess up and provide bad support. If for some reason we don’t respond to a support ticket or a problem is not handled to the satisfaction of our clients, who do they look to for resolution? It starts with me and passes down through the company. If our tier 1 tech support does not handle a situation with the absolute most integrity guess who is to blame? You are right, not tier 1 tech support. It’s me. If tech support lets a customer down or does not provide the level of support they are accustomed to you can bet I will get involved and e-mail the customer. You have a direct line to me at all times. In fact my extension is 9-01. If you are unsatisfied with our response to your account call me.
Ok, if you haven’t heard my LeadCritic interview, stop reading this and listen to that interview first. Then come back here for the rest of my message.
http://blog.leadcritic.com/lead-generation/starting-a-lead-generation-company
Ok you listened to the interview, now what?
You want to break into the lead space because you either worked at a company that sold leads or you happen to know a few people that could use some more leads. I am going to be the first one to tell you to slow down. Don’t buy our software, just yet. Do your homework, get some more experience, and then come back and see me when you know how to generate your own leads. I know, I know, this will probably irk some people ready to blow $2,500 on our setup fee. Honestly, you will spend the $2,500 with us, get training, and then not do anything while you try to figure out what an HTTP post is and how you get it to work with your landing page. Listen, I would love to have you as a customer when you understand these things, but if you don’t all you are doing is giving reputable lead companies a bad name. Yes, we have 7 different ways to easily send leads using LeadExec but you still have to have the knowledge to create high quality leads. Without any ability to create leads you are essentially going into the marketplace acting “as if”, only you acting “as if” in the lead business will get you in trouble with the FCC, BBB, could get you sued and turn off all the good lead buyers. Every year more rookie lead companies try to start their own lead company with no knowledge of how to create leads and it has to stop. Seriously, do your homework or you will lose all of your money. I only say this from experience. I have had to turn down several companies in the past that had no clue what they were doing and then the relationship becomes strained. I don’t want that. So don’t take my words personal! Just listen to someone who has seen the pitfalls and is trying to save you from making the same mistake those who have gone before you have made over and over.
Ok, so that last paragraph hasn’t made you want to go back to working the 9-5 at corporate America. You still want to run your own lead company and you know how to create leads. You have successfully made it to the second half of my article. Now you have to learn several key aspects of running a successful lead company. Here are the golden rules:
1. Create a high end website with specific information on how you create your leads. Use diagrams, illustrations, and skip the phony customer reviews. If you are going to have a customer review make it a case study and use a real company that has had success with your leads. Nothing turns off a major lead buyer more than seeing something like this:
“I closed 50% of my leads from LeadCo. And I made $5,000 in closed sales! Thanks Lead Co. you’re the best!”
Jim S. American Financial – South Carolina
Also, join as many trade associations as possible. If you are in mortgage leads join NAMB, if you are selling debt leads join TASC or USOBA. Join the BBB and take it seriously. If you get a complaint resolve it and treat your customers like you would want to be treated. That doesn’t mean give away leads but it does mean be realistic with the products you are selling. Stop overpromising and under delivering. If you are creating leads, use call verification to run a report on your own leads. Take a sample of 50-100 leads. Call them and ask if they are still interested in the service you are offering. Take the amount of good vs. bad and show this as a benchmark.
Example:
Out of 100 leads our company has consistently shown 80% good intent of the contacted applicants. On avg. we contacted 50% within the first 24 hours.
This kind of information can be captured and can show the strength of your leads. You have not promised close rates because you cannot and never will be able to. You have no idea what the sales skill level of the company you are selling to is, how would you?
2. Create a product letter
Your sales team and you should always use a product letter that outlines your lead gathering process, return acceptance rules, and your business practices. List your trade associations and any software advantages you have like ClickPoint – LeadExec, and your security of information. If you don’t know how to create a product letter, look at the ones we have on www.clickpointsoftware.com for all of our products.
3. Take your client setup rules seriously
Nothing is worse than clients that come aboard and start using LeadExec that don’t invest the time to take on learning the automation rules. You have software at your fingertips that wasn’t available a couple of years ago. Take advantage of the system and learn how to use the various delivery types.
4. Find a good merchant account
Having a bad merchant account can be the kiss of death. They can delay payments to you and make your life miserable. If they have no idea about the industry you are in and are not used to working with marketing firms, look elsewhere.
5. Get professional software
So you work for months to get that big lead buying customer and then they send you posting documentation and you have no idea what it means. You haven’t even considered that you need a lead distribution system to perform posts and record lead sales. So you do what most start up lead companies do, you start looking for a $10 an hour oversees programmer to help you. Now your post has taken weeks and you may lose your customer. Do yourself a favor and call 1-888-612-2877 and ask for a sales associate. We will set you up for less than it would cost for your international phone bill. We include 5 hours of posting assistance with your standard LeadExec setup and unlike your oversees programmer we do posts in about 1-2 hours not 1-2 weeks.
Stay tuned for my second installment of how to run a successful lead based business. This article will tell you how to run an ethical marketing business that grows as quickly as your reputation will for conducting a lead based business with quality leads.
I would like to think in a perfect world we as managers and CEOs would just know everything from the get go. The truth is that running a software company takes a great amount of trial and error. The long road to success comes only from learning what your customers really need from their software. Finding ways to reduce the time it takes between trial and the errors that follow is what we have determined to be the key to success. When we decided to launch our debt software we decided we would have our potential customers take a much more active role in the design process. This included many conference calls and planning sessions. I admit that in the past we as a company solicited advice from customers but never really engaged them through the entire process. It may be a relationship many can’t handle. If you involve more than one customer in this process you are sure to get opinions, needs, and irrational requests that are not feasible. It’s our job to sift through it all and implement the best design and use the best ideas.
The best technology companies are ones that can adapt to new technology and rapidly deploy updates and additions. At ClickPoint Software we work in small teams and have fostered an environment where new technology is seen as our ally in our quest to take on the big software companies. We want you to experience the best technology the 21st century has to offer. Does this mean we make a bunch of changes on a regular basis to our existing software? We do make changes, but only for the better. We take our clients’ needs into account and we consult with a large majority of clients in regards to our updates and features. Our customers’ needs drive the development here at ClickPoint Software. We have taken the lessons of software companies before us to heart. The days of releasing software in a box that you purchased off the shelf are long gone. ClickPoint Software is constantly evolving and growing around the needs of our clients.
Ok, I know there are a lot of people out there right now holding on for dear life and I couldn’t be more sympathetic. It’s a scary time for us that fall into the generation x age range. Most of us came out of college thinking the world was at our finger tips. Saving money was something most of just didn’t think about. I have never been in a situation like the one our economy is in right now, so I won’t pretend to be an expert. But my intuition tells me that there is opportunity in times like this and I think you just have to know where to look.
Yes, working at a large company that lets go of hard working employees after years of dedication is probably not the best position to be in. Being your own boss in a time like this can actually be a good thing despite the conventional wisdom that would suggest you hold on for dear life at your current job. I think it’s time to double down. There is opportunity everywhere. High value employees abound and rental rates are low. And if you ever needed a really good reason to be your own boss the long held concept of working at a company for 30 years without fear of being fired is now nothing more than a dream. Hard earned pensions and retirement plans being used as collateral for the fat cats at Corporate America that throw it away like Monopoly Money is now a daily headline. That feeling in your gut that there can be more responsible, ethical, and proactive businesses that bring tangible products to market is now a full fledge reality telling you, “Now is the time”. Get your head out of the sand and act now while you still have your ego intact and a good excuse if all goes to hell.
I firmly believe the way technology is advancing is like nothing we have seen before. Smaller companies that can adapt to new technology are taking on the big guys. David is more like a Super Mario with level three powers taking on a Goliath that has one hand tied behind his back. You now need a good programmer, solid business plan, and fortitude for Raman Noodles and away we go. If you have any doubt the time is now, do your homework there are articles all over the place saying what I am saying. I only speak on the matter because I see it firsthand. It’s happening at my company now. We are able to take on larger competition because we are able to implement the latest technology and bring products quickly to the market. We aren’t burdened by legacy systems and old coding languages that drag our software down. The face of technology companies is changing faster than anyone ever imagined. Be a part of the new class of ethical businesses and go to bed rested knowing you didn’t screw your employees out of all their hard earned savings. I salute you and so do the little guys everywhere that are looking for a good place to work with a leader that actually cares about the well being of the company and its employees.
One of the benefits of being a software provider to both lead sellers and lead buyers is data metrics. We have the ability to work with lead scoring, reporting, and metrics that can give us valuable insight into the world of leads.
Which leads work best?
I will tell it like it is. If you want to spend less time chasing leads there is a strong movement towards offline marketing like radio, tv, and direct mail. These avenues are helping companies spend less time trying to chase down leads. However, if you have the right software that can help you make educated decisions, leads generated online can be more cost effective. It all comes down to cost per closed deal.
So I know you still want to know which is best, right? Sorry, there isn’t really a solid answer but there is analysis you can conduct. You see what really matters is what kind of buyer are you. Are you the kind of buyer that likes to get a good deal and doesn’t mind the extra work it takes to call more leads to find the good ones? If you are, then you most likely will lean towards internet leads. If this is the case you still need to find the best internet lead sources. The best internet lead sources have the best contact rates and give you the best opportunity to present your service. This means you need to be able to respond fast or in real time. You also need to be one of 1-3 people pitching the potential client not one of 12. So how do you know if you have a good internet lead provider or not? It’s all in the numbers and unfortunately you won’t be able to tell that without some data to sample. The first step should be to read my article on becoming a lead company. Reputable lead companies act like reputable lead companies. Look for the same things I promote to lead companies. Look for trade associations, look for BBB, and look for real referrals. Now that you have your company picked, get ready to analyze and stay on top of performance. You need to be looking first and foremost to contact rate. Train your agents to ask the customer how many other companies are they getting quotes from. With our LMS system we record this information for you and give you real time reports to help you make sense of it all.
Ok, you decided internet leads are too much work for you and you would rather pay more for a live person on the phone ready to hear your pitch. If this is the case our Lead Management system has the perfect live call solution. With our live call solution companies like Leads99 and Double Positive can post right into the system and your agents can input a phone number and pull the lead information in real time as the phone call is coming over. The only thing left to do is to look at metrics like application percentage and close percentage. With 25 live call transfers you should be able to get a good read on the quality. All you have to do is determine cost per close. If each live call cost $50 multiply by 25 for a total spent of $1,250. If your team closed 2 deals then use that data to get $1,250 / 2 = $625 COST PER CLOSED DEAL. You should have a benchmark you are looking to achieve with every live call campaign. Now that you know your CPCD is $625 you have a benchmark to judge all lead providers. Example metrics are used to help determine speed to contact, contact rate, and cost per closed deal.
I wanted to start our blog off with the story of how we became ClickPoint. I think it’s always important to get a good feel for an organization before you do business with them. In all truthfulness I never imagined that I would be running a software company. I always envisioned myself working as the head of an ad agency, marketing company, or some kind of organization where I could use the creative side. It all happened about 6 years ago when I got my first real experience working with programmers and developers on small projects for a marketing company where I was vice president. I immediately saw that although you have to be much more patient with software there is tremendous opportunity to use your creative attributes.
The first time you see something you thought of come to fruition is amazing. With software you not only get see it as it comes to life but then you get to see how the people using it react. I started to get the feeling that with the right team of creative and technical experts we could contribute something to the business community. Finding the need wasn’t hard. Working in the online marketing space which hasn’t fully matured was and still is an industry full of opportunity. Literally every week you hear from someone that they wished their software could do something that would make their lives better. Picking exactly which direction with so many to choose from is not as easy as it sounds. You have to listen to what customers, friends, colleagues, and industry experts are telling you. Most importantly you have to do the research and come to your own conclusion.
My conclusion was that existing CRM, sales, and lead distribution software were much too complicated for the average sales person. Not to say salespeople can’t understand it, but most of what I was seeing just wasn’t practical for salespeople. In my opinion most early CRM companies were designing software with the decision maker in mind forgetting that if the salespeople weren’t happy with the application they would lose the business. You have to remember who the software is intended for and I think a lot of the early companies missed the boat. Maybe they were originally sought out by marketing directors, IT, and high level management that gave their input to the perfect system. I’m not sure but I could tell by listening and using these applications that they weren’t working.
Google and Apple have shown us over the years that simplicity can be the best weapon when selling technology. People want ease of use in their life not clutter. We heard from sales agents in the online industry, finance, education, insurance, and retail that they were ready for a change. The most important things to salespeople were efficiency and ease of use. It was after seeing the need and knowing we had a great grasp of how lead management should work that ClickPoint was started. I knew several programmers that were running their own companies but one had done amazing work for us on projects from time to time. I immediately sought him out to make the move to ClickPoint in early 2005. Michael Sawyer our CTO and I embarked on building practical sales tools for the finance industry. After getting user reviews and a steady referral base we sought out funding and were able to secure it on our first pitch. It seems that even our investors understood the need for easy to use practical sales software. So just like that ClickPoint was born. Now we are faced with making our software unique and remembering why we started in the first place. Simplicity was demanded and it was only a matter of time before the right entrepreneur listened and took action.
